All Fairytales End
by oldmanbasil
Summary: Ten years after the events of the series, things have changed. People, places, political climate. Ruby and Weiss lead an elite task force, Blake defends the Faunus populace against threats both within and without, and Yang continues her search for answers. It's a whole new world, but there's still plenty in it to be afraid of. Based on original concept and artwork by Dishwasher1910
1. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER 1**

* * *

" _Knowledge can only carry you so far…"_

Prof. Ozpin, former Headmaster, Beacon Academy, Vale

* * *

In her mind, she replayed it every day. Moments and years blurring together and streaming past in a river of memory, over and over again. The rush of the wind, her calls to her teammates, the thrill of the hunt, then pain, gods, _blinding_ pain; she had heard people use the expression but never imagined until that point that there could actually _be_ a sensation so agonizing that everything else fell away. Light, sound, color, feeling, all faded before the searing pain that burned red, red, red.

 _Red like roses, haunted dreams, and praying for some kind of rest._

Riven by pain, she struggled to keep that youthful smile on her face, for those who gathered at her bedside. She saw the pain in their eyes – a mirrored reflection of her own – and it hurt her even more to see it. So she put on a brave face – wasn't that what you were supposed to do when bad things happened? Wasn't that what she had done before? Been brave, even though every part of her wanted to scream her lungs raw and melt into the ground? She heard the words they whispered when they thought she was asleep: _irreparable damage— never walk again— end of a promising career— poor girl—_

 _Poor girl._ That stung. That poor girl had saved the world when she was barely an adult, and now that poor girl got to sit here and listen to them, soak in their pity. It made it harder to keep a brave face when she heard things like that, knowing that they had no faith, not in themselves and certainly not in her. Not anymore.

Poor girl.

 _White is cold and filled with yearning, burdened by her failure's stress._

It was her fault. All of it. The botched hunt, the faulty intel, the creature escaping and… Ruby. The first time she saw her old friend – her oldest and truest friend – after the incident, she fell on her knees and wept. She might not have done so had others been present, but it was just the two of them, then. It had been two weeks already, work having rushed to meet her in the wake of the accident and her eagerness to meet it matched only by her fear of what that first meeting would be like.

"This is all my fault," she had said.

"No, it isn't," came the noble lie in response.

Mind clouded by grief, logic subservient to raw emotion, she had thrown herself back into her work but without passion, without thought, without grace. She didn't want to look at the ugliness of the reality that confronted her.

So she didn't.

 _Black the beast slips into shadow._

There was little doubt that Ruby's injury was the death knell for their team. Everyone knew it. Though they'd been estranged for a few years already, the spark that had so long kept their flame alive – a spark that endured the Fall of Beacon, the deaths of their friends, the rise of Salem, crisis after crisis and tragedy after tragedy – was gone. Whisked away, like a single fallen petal on an errant breeze that cared not for the lives it disturbed on its windy way.

Blake was the first to see Ruby, after the surgery – and had the least to say. She had been in Atlas on a diplomatic trip, representing her father and the rest of Menagerie. She shed tears, but they were shed in silence and in solidarity. For a long time the two had just sat there, Blake at the bedside and Ruby tucked beneath blankets attended to by a host of instruments and monitors, and cried together. When it was done, Blake stood, and left. She did not stop at the door to the room, or the door to the hospital, or anywhere beyond. She walked and sailed and flew. She was not running, as she had done years earlier, escaping a fate she thought she could delay. As she saw it, her team was a thing of the past, and while she maintained her contact with the others, she truly believed that this was the end of one era, and the beginning of a new.

And she went home.

 _Yellow fury burns cold._

Yang's world came crashing down when Ruby fell, bloodied and crippled, like a broken angel, to the earth. A child she had helped to raise, a sister who meant everything to her: the same young girl who had saved her life, given her purpose, helped her move on when everything in the world seemed broken and horrid and wrong… now lying there, her body a bank of machines ticking her vitals, a victim of that same broken world.

It wasn't fair.

 _Shut up girl, nothing's fair. If things were fair, you'd have a mother, a sister, a life beyond this._

But she didn't. She didn't have a mother, though she'd searched for so long and finally found something that disappointed her more than she could've ever imagined. She didn't have a life beyond this, because she had never imagined that she would need to. And now, the insidious little voice in the back of her mind told her, she didn't even have a sister.

 _She'll never be the same._

Shut up.

 _She's broken, twisted, undone, and you with her—_

No.

 _Yes._

No.

Cold anger gripped her. It felt like something had reached into her chest and wrapped its hands around her heart. Every pulse of the organ felt restricted: she was numb. She was cold. She was angry. She wanted to let the fire rage, to let it burn down the entire forest and her along with it. She wanted to find the creature that had done this to Ruby and tear it, screaming, to unrecognizable pieces and burn them to ash. She wanted to scream. She wanted to fight. She wanted to die.

But seeing Ruby lying there… the only light that had ever burned brighter than her own… she pushed the rage away, sparing it for a time when it would be needed more. Ruby didn't need to be avenged right now. She needed to be saved.

* * *

She was there every step of the way. Surgery, recovery, therapy. She'd held Ruby's head and the two had cried for hours. She'd held her hand as the doctors gave one grim prognosis after another. She hated it: wasn't one time enough? Why did they have to keep calling in doctors from all over the kingdoms to tell them the same damn thing over and over again. _Irreparable damage— never walk again— end of a promising career_. She snapped one day, screamed at them to get out. It didn't help. Hell, if anything, it made it worse, because it showed Ruby just how thin the mask of control and composure that Yang had been wearing up until then truly was.

Yang was mad at Blake for leaving, but she understood. More than anything, she wished that her teammate had simply said goodbye to the rest of them. It echoed too much of a previous incident, where Blake fled following tragedy. But Yang was older now, she understood more clearly, even if it still hurt her.

Weiss was another matter. The Atlesian girl had always been stoic, and arrogant, and a workaholic, but this series of events made things all the worse. Because while Yang was always there, and Blake had been there and left, Weiss simply wasn't there. She blamed herself – rightly or not was irrelevant, as far as Yang was concerned; blame solved nothing – but she isolated herself from the source of her pain, as if it would somehow magically go away.

But Yang had stopped believing in magic years ago. Now, she placed her faith in people, and the fact that one of the people she unequivocally placed her trust in was burying her head in the sand was unforgivable.

She had cornered Weiss, to get her point across. Didn't invite her out to coffee (which she would have refused), didn't go and visit her at work (where she could have cited some excuse, or worse, had security throw Yang out on her ass). She found her at home. Weiss' apartment was a simple, two-room affair in an Atlesian highrise, ten-minutes flight via helipad from the SDC headquarters. She had eschewed going back and living in her family home – too many painful memories, even after her father died – and so when she returned home from another day of ignoring the world around her in favor of profit margins and shareholders, she flipped on the lights to find Yang waiting for her.

If she was surprised, she didn't show it. That irked Yang a little; the whole point of this was to make Weiss squirm.

"How did you get past Alder?" Weiss asked, referring to the thick-bodied, green-haired man she had hired to keep an eye on her apartment while she was away (which was nearly always).

Yang shrugged. "I have my ways." He was asleep in the master bedroom. Three days earlier, Yang had bumped (literally) into the man on the street. Like a gentleman, he had helped her collect the items she dropped, before blushing furiously when their eyes locked for more than a brief moment. Next came coffee, then a dinner date for three nights hence, concluding with so many whiskey sours that the poor man had to be carted up to the apartment slung over Yang's shoulder. "We need to talk," she told her teammate.

Weiss said nothing, just sighed and dropped her bag on the couch, before rummaging through the refrigerator and pulling out two shiny cans. Yang cocked a quizzical eyebrow. "When did you start drinking pisswater like the rest of us peasants?"

"Hangovers are easier to manage," Weiss replied simply, and Yang could've laughed under different circumstances. In the airy light of the apartment, Weiss' pale face took on an almost ethereal shade, but Yang could see the dark lines ringing her narrow eyes, the disheveled quality of her hair and makeup. She looked like she hadn't slept in a week. She probably hadn't.

"I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you don't know why I'm here," Yang began, before Weiss interrupted.

"Yet you'll waste both our time by giving yourself a disclaimer." She slung one of the cans to Yang, who caught it nimbly, but did not open it. Weiss popped the top of her own and took a long, practiced drink, dropping into a chair across the small living space, facing Yang and the cityscape beyond. _Shit,_ Yang mused to herself. _She's drinking like a teenager at a post-prom kegger. What the hell has happened to her?_ Weiss had never been the most emotional of the group, not by a longshot. She felt, sure, and strongly, but she had never been one to let that emotion grab hold of her. This person, sitting across from Yang now, was a far cry from the heiress that she had met and mocked so many years ago.

"How's Ruby?" Weiss asked, surprising Yang with her interest. She would've thought that Weiss would rather leave the matter unspoken, continuing her practice of isolating herself from the matter.

"She's good," Yang lied. A pregnant pause grew between them. "She's… doing better," she corrected herself. "As well as can be expected, all things considered. Today, we got a visit from a doctor from Menagerie of all places, said he was the premier medical expert on the entire island." Not that it had made a difference; the man had taken one look at Ruby and declared her a non-starter. _"As advanced as some of our techniques are,"_ he had said, _"we sadly lack the equipment and funding to make any sort of real effective prosthetic or replacement."_

That was the dish de jour, apparently. Pretty much every other doctor had said the same thing, and even the ones who noted that they _did_ have the funding and technology needed said that it would be one of the most difficult experiments they had ever undertaken, with no guarantee of success. Yang had questioned one of the doctors about it after he left the room.

" _The simple fact,"_ he had said, _"is that any prosthetics we have designed before would be incapable of coping with the stress that they would undergo as part of a Huntress' accoutrements. Miss Rose's semblance, her dynamism, her… propensity to take risks,"_ Yang had almost punched him when he said that bit, _"would reduce the effective lifespan of the limbs to a fraction of what they would be under any other circumstance."_

" _I've seen people like us use prosthetic legs before,"_ Yang had said haughtily. _"They didn't seem to have any trouble standing up to the stress."_

The doctor had correctly inferred her meaning. _"Mercury Black's prosthetics were custom-made, and unfortunately were never recovered after his death, so we have nothing to study."_

" _And what about this, then?"_ Yang had asked, incensed, holding her own prosthetic arm for the man to see. _"Tell me that this isn't reverse-engineerable or something. Hell, I'll give it to you if that's what it takes, take it apart and study it, I don't care. There has to be_ something _you can do!"_

" _Miss Xiao-Long,"_ the man had said warily, seeing the flames flickering in her irises. _"That arm of yours is proprietary Atlesian military technology, developed with the support of the Schnee Dust Company."_

" _You think I don't know that?"_

" _I'm certain you do, and as such, I believe you already know who you should be talking to about what you're proposing."_

And so here she was, watching Weiss crush a can of near-beer with the best of them, her stomach roiling as she contemplated how best to say what she had come here to say. Did she plead with Weiss? Play off of her guilt? Attempt to lessen the blow by promising how, if it worked, things would go back to the way they had always been, nothing would change, and life would simply go on?

Nah. Fuck it. Best to just be blunt with her.

"I want you to speak to Ironwood," Yang said. Weiss did not lower the can from her lips, but she stopped drinking. "And the board at the SDC. I want them to dig up their old files, their blueprints, whatever, and find some way – _any_ way – to get Ruby walking again. I don't care how you do it. I just want it done. And I know that, even if you haven't allowed yourself to accept it, you already knew that this was an option. You haven't taken it yet, for whatever reason, but I don't care. Really, I don't."

She stood, setting down the can and striding across the small room to tower over her still-seated teammate. "You care about Ruby. In a way, you love her, same as I do. But you blame yourself for what happened, so you've cut yourself off from her, because seeing her like this makes you feel bad."

Weiss has lowered the can now but refuses to meet Yang's gaze. "It is my fault," she says in a small voice.

Yang hits her upside the head. A bit of beer sloshes out of the can and only Weiss' clean white leggings. Before Weiss can cry out, Yang drops to a knee and looks her dead in the eye. "Who fucking cares if it's your fault? Maybe you made a mistake, maybe you didn't. If you did, you're owning it, great, good for you. If not, you're feeling guilty for nothing, which is just stupid." Lavender and ice blue eyes hover inches from one another. "Either way, you're hurting Ruby more than this injury ever could. Yesterday, she had the curtains around her bed closed. She was asleep, but she woke up when I opened the door. You know what she did? She threw back the curtain and _called your name_. And when she saw me, she tried to hide her disappointment, but I'm not stupid, I saw the meaning there.

"She _misses_ you, Weiss. You're her best friend, and you've abandoned her." The word – _abandoned_ – is like a slap in the face to the shorter woman. She rockets to her feet, staggering Yang backwards.

"You think I don't know that?!" she shouts. "You think I don't lie awake every night wishing that I could take it all back? The reason nothing has been done about it is because I already asked, Yang, and _they said no._ "

Yang feels as though she's been punched in the chest. "They…" she struggles. "What?"

Weiss falls back into her seat, eyes to the floor once again. "They said no," she repeats. "The board can't spare the funding with the Dust Embargo in effect, and Ironwood is away, won't respond to my messages." She lifts her gaze to Yang once again. "That's why I haven't been able to face Ruby. That's why I've been throwing myself into my work; I figure if I can get this stupid issue with the embargo sorted out, then maybe I can convince them to…"

She trails off. Yang can see everything clearly now; Weiss was not broken by what happened to Ruby: she was broken by the fact that no one cares. The most famous Huntress in the world, and the richest people around, with the best minds and the best tools, can't spare the time or money to keep her in the business. Yang sets her jaw, her mouth forming a hard line. She glances at her watch. Half an hour until midnight. She kicks Weiss' ankle. "Get up," she chirps.

"Wha—"

"We're going to go pay a little visit to the chairman of the SDC's board," Yang growls, cinders glowing at the roots of her hair. "And then we're going to give my sister her legs back, even if we have to break someone else's to do it."

* * *

It had taken five weeks for them to deliver the prototype to Ruby. Ahead of that, Yang had already begun assisting in (and sometimes taking over) physical therapy for the rest of her sister's body: _"No more lying in bed,"_ she'd proclaimed. _"You're still a huntress. Imagine what old Professor Goodwitch would say if she saw you with those flabby little arms."_

Though she'd smiled and gone along with the PT, there was still a hauntedness about Ruby. This was rectified somewhat by Weiss' sudden reappearance in her life, the haughty girl brought to a level by her old friend. Ruby did not inquire as to why Weiss had taken such a leave of absence, and truthfully, Weiss wasn't sure what she would say if Ruby did grow curious.

Neither did Ruby ask what strings had had to be pulled to manifest the shining new pair of legs presented to her, as she sat in the hospital's rehabilitation center doing arm curls, some new rock song or another blasting through her headphones. Yang and Weiss delivered the limbs together, watching from the sidelines as the Atlesian technicians deftly buckled the bewildered Ruby into a state-of-the-art harness. "We will need to perform a surgery to make sure that everything it attached completely," one of the techs said. "But for now, your sister and Miss Schnee insisted that you get a chance to feel what they're like at their most basic. Think of it like a bike with the training wheels on."

Ruby had taken a shaky moment, a long rattling breath, eyes brimming with tears as they locked with first Yang's, then Weiss' from across the room. Then, like a baby deer taking its first steps, she rocked unsteadily to her feet and bounded clumsily across the small room, half-leaping and half-falling into Yang's arms. Now the tears flowed freely. "Thank you," she sobbed, voice hoarse and rough with emotion. "Thank you-u-u-…"

Yang embraced her sister, then pulled Weiss close as well. And for a long while, the three sat and wept together, months of pain and shock rearing their head once more, before melting away in the face of something new. Something brighter. Something straight out of a fairy tale.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Howdy do. Oh Jesus Christ I can't believe I wrote that. Anyway, this is a thing! An AU thing, a FF thing, most of all a RWBY thing! I've been a fan of the series long enough to know how ravening the hiatus can become, so I wrote the fabulous Dishwasher1910 (check out his Artstation, Twitter, and Reddit for more of the _real_ good stuff) and asked his humble permission to get this thing off the ground. It's still a little rough around the edges, so feedback would be greatly appreciated.

For a bit of context about the RWBY 3.0 AU (credit to Dish for the background): with the exception of this chapter (which serves as a scene-setter, so to speak) the Fic will take place ten years after the so-called "Salem Crisis," which I'm not going to say anything more about at this time, save that things happened, and ever since people have been dealing with the fallout. Just before the start of this chapter, as Dish establishes in one of his context posts, Ruby lost both of her legs fighting a new, previously-unseen variety of Grimm. This was approximately five years after the crisis, and thus five years before the start of the AU. A lot has changed: people, places, both before and after the Salem Crisis. People have gone their separate ways, forged new paths for themselves, and those paths don't always lead people to the same conclusions. Expect difficulty, interpersonal conflict, and some dangerous new creatures. It's a brave new world, but that doesn't make it any less deadly.

I'll be trying to update weekly, maybe more as I can muster it. Again, feel free to comment or PM with questions, suggestions, anything, and be sure to check out Dish's artwork for the inspiration for this whole shebang.

That's it, that's all I've got. Kisses.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER 2**

* * *

" _This job is all about intelligence. How do you win a war if you don't know who, what, when, or where you're going to be fighting? You can show up with the biggest army, biggest fleet, biggest guns… but if you show up two weeks early, or two weeks late, you're just as screwed as if you didn't show up at all."_

Qrow Branwen, former Signal Academy Professor

* * *

 **August 9, 91 PGW**

" _Ma'am?"_ came the voice, hollow and distorted through the hum of the dropship's engines and the crackling voice filter on the speaker's helmet. Weiss opened her eyes, roused from a far-off place, the crystalline display of her own helm feeding her data at a rate which, without her implants, would be impossible to decipher. As it was, she reads the vital signs, heart rate, and general disposition of every one of the half-dozen Atlesian operatives crammed into the belly of the drum-like shuttle.

Most were exactly as they ought to be: their heartrates were steady, and their minds focused on the task at hand. Jade was in the zone, her fingers drumming on the stock of her rifle as she blasted the latest from some Vacuan rock song or another. Alba was machine-like in her precision, checking and rechecking her weapon; a tad bit obsessive, but it was better than rocking back and forth in the corner from anxiety. Moss was recording a video to send to his kids, the same as before every mission. He made no mention of the coming operation – where he was, who was with him, or why – for the sake of operational security. Instead, he told jokes, expressed how much he missed his wife's cooking, and asked the children to stay out of trouble for him until he got back. Roux was praying again, silent as the grave.

Ind was fidgeting nervously in his shiny new armor; three weeks ago, he'd nearly met his end when a Deathstalker had taken the group by surprise. The massive monster had peeled open his armor like a sardine can and was bare seconds away from skewering the poor man when the rest of the squad got a handle on the situation. His heartrate was elevated now, his hands flexing and unflexing at his sides, and Weiss began to carefully shuffle her way across the hold to the man when someone else beat her to it.

Matte black synthskin, silver highlights, red trim. Weiss suppressed the urge to sigh aloud. The rest of the team had gawked when they first met Ruby, and even having known her for nearly a decade at that point, Weiss still couldn't deny that the young woman made a statement. Still half a head shorter than everyone else on the team (save Weiss), Ruby nonetheless carried herself in a professional manner that Weiss would never have expected from the energetic young woman when they first met all those years ago. Ruby shot a glance over her shoulder, her helmet tucked casually beneath an arm, and gave a half-smile before turning back to her nerve-racked teammate. Weiss settled back against the bulkhead and tuned in to the conversation.

"Hey Ind," Ruby chirped. "Ready for this?"

Ind stared at Ruby silently, the opaque duroplex mask of his helmet hiding his expression. The young woman tapped against the Ind's face shield, causing him to flinch, but she laughed quietly and a moment later he reciprocated, chuckling nervously as he keyed a button behind his left ear. The mask slithered back into the plated armor around his neck and collar.

Ind was the second youngest on the team, beating Jade by twenty-four days. The two rounded out a timescale for the team that spanned three decades; Jade and Ind weren't even ten when Ruby and Weiss were saving the world for the first time. With pale skin, a narrow aquiline face, and blue-black hair cut short and swept back, Ind's normally-jovial features were stricken by the recent pain and fear of a near-death experience. These were new lines for him, but ones which the rest of the squad had all worn at one time or another. They understood. They empathized. Ruby probably did so better than all the rest. After his brush with oblivion, the rest of them had done everything they knew to get him rolling again; sparring, sessions with two different therapists, a pub crawl… after every attempt, Ind had walked out with the same half-assed smile on his face and talked emptily about how much it had helped. Weiss was perturbed to see him in this state; for all the world, he'd actually seemed to be getting better, and she hoped that returning to fieldwork might help him get back in the saddle quicker.

 _Well, if anyone can find common ground with him right now, it's Ruby,_ Weiss mused.

Ruby gestured to Ind's weapon, which sat beside him leaning against the aft bulkhead. The young man quirked and eyebrow and hefted the firearm – a modified standard-issue Atlesian Harbinger 81 assault shotgun – which Ruby inspected briefly with the critical eye of a master gunsmith. "Why don't you use a weapon that you made yourself?" she asked, voice straining slightly to be heard over the din of the ship's engines. "You went to an academy."

Ind looked sheepish. "Uh… yeah, we don't… uh… we don't really _do_ that in Atlas." Ruby looked aghast, and the man hastened to clarify, "Whole clamping down on self-expression thing, you know? Besides, you can't go wrong with something tried and true."

"Sure," Ruby replied, "but what about Weiss? She's from Atlas, and she built her own weapon."

"I guess." The young man shrugged. "The Commandant though… she was a special case."

Ruby glanced quickly over her shoulder, and Weiss felt herself flush slightly beneath her helmet. Almost without meaning to, one hand brushed Myrtenaster's hilt where it hung at her side, the weapon that had carried her as much as she carried it for the last fifteen years. It occurred to her all of a sudden that in all the time they'd known each other, Weiss had never explained to her partner that Atlesian Huntsmen and Huntresses didn't build their own weapons as students; Myrtenaster and her sister's blades, both were gifts from their father upon their making their decision to attend the Huntsmen Academies. The nostalgia of her long and proud history with the weapon is soured somewhat by the memory of Jacques.

"Ma'am? Commandant can— can she hear me?" Weiss was shaken by the request for attention, and she realized all at once that, since being roused from her reverie, she had completely ignored whomever it was that had roused her. She followed Ruby's turning gaze to glance at Argen, who stood in the small doorway between the airship's hold and cockpit. Striding across the small space, she shook off the last cobwebs of her overactive mind and focused on the task at hand. So busy worrying about everyone else that I let myself get thrown for a loop. She gave an imperceptible shake of her own head and followed the tall man through the doorway. In the lower of the two-tiered pilot and copilot seats, Sierra toiled away at a bank of flashing lights and iridescent holos, guiding the airship through the dense cloud cover.

"What's the situation?" Weiss asked, mind, body and voice finally snapping into alignment and assuming command of the situation. She glanced at the displays, trying to get a measure for what might be going on. Most showed the same thing: a whole lot of translucent blue clouds, with their own bulk illuminated in orange as it cut through the heavy cover.

"We're approaching the drop," Sierra chimed, but there's a slight conundrum."

"The clouds?"

"The clouds."

"They're not natural," Argen added sagely. "Weather report spotted a storm off the coast but figured it would dissipate once it hit the mountains." As if punctuating his statement, a fork of lightning sliced through the clouds a kilometer or so ahead of the dropship. A moment later, the reverberation shook through the ship, causing Weiss to grit her teeth. "Clearly," Argen continued, "that's not the case."

"Could it be our target?" Weiss asked, wary of the answer.

Argen shrugged. "Could. It would fit with the fact that we're flying blind here – metaphorically speaking of course, Sierra. Still, I've never heard of any sort of Grimm that can control the weather." There's a note of underlying dread in his voice, despite his veteran status on the team. Argen was the first agent Weiss had recruited to her team, the sterling soldier coming with Ironwood's personal approval, and Winter's backing as well. He'd been Weiss' shadow for the last four years, a persistent source of calm in a world that sometimes seemed to only be growing madder and madder. He was a creature of logic, reason, and measured risk. The unknown put him on edge, which was unfortunate, given his career choice.

Weiss craned upward slightly to place a hand on the big man's shoulder. "If anyone had heard of it, they wouldn't have sent us." Turning back to Sierra, she asked, "Where can you set us down?"

"Storm's getting more intense," Sierra responded, an edge growing on her voice as she was forced to concentrate more and more on keeping the airship aloft. Lightning forked again outside the viewport, closer this time, the reverberations of the thunderclap making Weiss' muscles tense uneasily. "But," Sierra continued, unphased, "there're pockets of calmer air scattered around – including one big ol' gap right at the heart of this mess. If the target is causing this freakshow, you'll likely find it at the center of the storm."

"How fast is it moving?" Weiss asked, her eyes tracking the holographic display of the storm, its yawning eye like the maw of a great Charybdian beast. "Once we're on the ground, will we be able to catch up to it?"

"It seems to be slowing, actually. Eye of the storm is holding position three klicks out." The pilot sounded slightly surprised, which did little to assuage the growing pit in Weiss' stomach. _Control. Keep it tight. They feed off your certainty. Don't let them down._

"Did it hit a mountain?" Argen asked. "Natural barrier? Might be that the storm is just that." His voice is measured, tone barely concealing the desperate hope that he's right.

Pale as she already was, Weiss noticed Sierra blanche. "What is it, Sierra?" she asked darkly.

"No natural landmass in the area," Sierra muttered quietly, voice barely audible over the engine noise. "Not a mountain or a lake. The storm stopped all on its own." She was silent for a long moment, and Weiss had to repeat the pilot's name to get her to continue.

"Sierra," Weiss said again, the small room growing cold with dread. "Where did it stop?"

Sierra didn't answer immediately. Instead, she flipped a series of switches and keyed a command code. Immediately, the soft off-white lighting that normally filled the cockpit, and the hazier yellow color that illuminated the hold, were both replaced by a soft crimson glow. Combat lighting. Sierra flipped down the tac-visor on her helmet. Her next words, stoically-spoken though they were, sent a spike through Weiss' core.

"It's stopped over a settlement."

* * *

Silent against the howling wind of the storm, eight figures detached themselves from the belly of the shuttle and dropped bodily to the earth eighty meters below. A series of wordless checks and acknowledgements passed between the squad, confirming approach vectors, ROE, contingency plans. Without a sound, the Gigas Squadron of Atlesian Special Research and Elimination cantered forward at thirty kilometers per hour, powered exoskeletal legs propelling them far faster for far longer than any human should be able to move naturally. Weiss settled herself at the heart of the three-wide, two-deep line – each member of the fireteam no more or less than twenty meters apart – and sent a silent ping of instruction to her point men. Two clicks came in response, and Weiss noted with satisfaction the elite precision with which Ruby and Argen detached themselves from the rest of the squad and raced ahead.

Weiss had never considered the military when she was undergoing her Huntress training; she had no special loyalty to Atlas – none of the nationalistic fervor that had damned them repeatedly in the past – and unlike Winter she had not felt bound to serve a cause greater than herself. It was an unusual departure for the young girl in white who had spent the first seventeen years of her life trying to do everything exactly like her big sister.

Yet with Ruby's injury, things had taken a severe departure from what was expected, and in the wake of the Salem Crisis little made sense anymore. It was clear to the world that the dangers they faced stretched far beyond the realm of pure imagination. The devils they knew were bad enough, but there was still far worse out there in the wilderness, far from civilized places: monsters that were stronger, smarter, more tenacious than anything humans or faunus had faced before. And there were more and more of them every day.

Weiss' comm crackled, and she dispatched a quick ping, bringing the squad to a halt. They were dropped three klicks from the village, in a densely-wooded patch of land. She knelt in the underbrush and keyed the comm to listen in on the advance scouts' report, patching her own helmet feed through to Argen's at the same time. Reality bent queerly as her own vision faded into the background and instead she gazed through Argen's eyes, seeing what he saw. The old soldier and Ruby were perched on a small wooded bluff, the ledge dropping ten meters to a patch of open terrain that formed a sort of greenbelt around the village. Argen's vision blurred briefly, and the image magnified as he tuned his helmet's optics to get a closer look.

The settlement was not unusual for one of its size or location; a collection of perhaps two-dozen single-story houses, ringed by a three- meter-high wall of wood and stone. Argen's sight blurred again, and a series of humanoid outlines appeared, glowing an incandescent red-orange. Easy enough to mistake for humans with a cursory glance, but Weiss knew better. It was one of the first new species of Grimm that she had catalogued with the SRED: taller than most humans, usually around two meters, with a lean build and an abnormally long neck ending in an alien head, the cranium elongated to the back and the fanged jaw jutting forward maliciously. Most damning of all to the illusion of humanity were the long blade-like appendages that took the place of hands. Weiss shuttered at the unbidden memory of her first encounter with the creatures – the grisly deeds they could commit with those bladed limbs of theirs – and compartmentalized the mingled disgust and rage that the memory fomented. All the more reason to get into that village before anyone gets hurt.

Argen's summary for the squad reiterated what Weiss could see. "Gigas 2-1, Gigas Actual," he started, using the squads' official designations. Always the professional. "Open patch of ground for the last half-klick up to the village. No signs of the villagers, confirmed Grimm presence. I count half a dozen Scions, probably more in the vicinity. Advise."

Moss shifted, finger flexing on the trigger guard of his rifle. "Of course it had to be Scions."

Weiss ignored him. "Hold fire, Gigas 2. Wait to engage." She motioned to the rest of the squad and they moved up quickly, the knowledge of imminent combat snapping them all into the headspace that only a frontline soldier can comprehend. The world outside melts away, and every one of the millions-upon-millions of lives on all the continents shrinks down to the world that _matters_ , the lives that matter: yours, your squads', your enemies'. Keep yours, save theirs, end the lattermost. No hows or whys, no ifs, ands, or buts. Warfare was simple mathematics: you won if they lost more than you did. That was why Atlas strived to keep the human element _off_ the battlefield; the mind of a living creature was prone to emotions and decisions that were out of the realm of possibilities for a mech. Some jobs couldn't be trusted to a machine though: in a situation like this, failure was an unacceptable outcome.

That was why they only sent the best.

The team rendezvoused on the small bluff, Ruby standing with a rangefinder and peering over the village, Argen on his belly, one eye pressed close to the scope of his rifle. "Three more Scions," he said as Weiss approached. Ruby put down the rangefinder and looked at Weiss, the emotionless mask of her helmet hiding the expression Weiss knew she wore.

"What's the plan?" Ruby asked. The rest of the squad tuned in.

In a moment, Weiss surveyed the situation with practiced eyes. The storm was still mostly immobile; they were just at the edge of the eye now, wind lashing the trees behind them even as the meadow ahead was barely stirred by the breeze. It had shielded their approach but now it was playing havoc with their communications; Weiss could barely keep a line open with Sierra for a moment before static nearly blew out her eardrums. The dropship was circling about a kilometer from the edge of the eye, keeping in the clouds as much as possible to avoid giving anything away to the Grimm. The small village still looked mostly abandoned from the distance, and aside from the couple of Scions there were no Grimm sighted. A small, foolish hope attempted to worm its way into the back of her mind. She crushed it underneath a steel-clad boot. _Forget hopes and worries. Focus on the task at hand._

She took the rangefinder from Ruby, quickly scanned the field, and made up her mind in an instant. "Ruby, Argen, flank right to that ridge," she indicated with a finger to where another small bluff overlooked the greenbelt. Closer, and with a better angle on the village. "Confirm when you arrive and get set up, and the rest of the squad will mobilize." For a brief moment, Weiss could practically feel the crestfallen air that Ruby projected. It evaporated as quickly as it had appeared, but Weiss knew. She fought back a sigh. Then, an idea came unbidden. "Belay that: Argen, take Ind instead. Ind, you're spotting." She slung the viewfinder underhand to the young man. "Keep his targets tracked and make sure that nothing catches us by surprise."

There was a brief moment before Argen punched Ind in the arm, and the young man barked a crisp "Aye ma'am," before shouldering his weapon and nodding to Argen. The two took off, keeping to the treeline, toward the overwatch position that Weiss had indicated. She turned to the rest of the squad.

"Split into two teams. Roux, take Alba and Jade and flank right; Ruby and Moss with me, we go left. Comms might get spotty so watch your flanks and keep your fingers on the trigger. Remember: primary objective is target acquisition and elimination _if possible_. Secondary objective is the evacuation of any surviving townspeople." It stung to relegate the survival of noncombatants to "secondary," but Weiss couldn't afford to compromise protocol. Not when they were in the dark like this. "Don't charge everything you come across head-on: think tactically, fall back if need be, and coordinate. No heroics, let's just get this done quick and clean. Mark."

"Sync," echoed the squad. A chirp in Weiss' ear announced that Argen and Ind were in position. Steadying herself, she drew Myrtenaster from her side and let her armored thumb brush over the worn grip, the familiarity of the weapon bolstering her like a whole second set of armor.

Without another word, they were off.

* * *

The two squads fanned until they were a hundred meters apart, then raced forward. The dry late-Summer grass was waist-high and whipped at them as they charged through it at fifteen kilometers per hour. Ruby took point, Crescent Rose in her hands but still folded. Weiss followed close behind, and Moss brought up the rear, checking approach angles and watching the skies for trouble.

Weiss touched her free hand to her ear, keying in her comm and requesting a fresh report from Argen. The comm crackled irritatingly and Weiss was about to cut the line when Ind's voice answered instead.

"Conf—" Static. "Heavy interference, holding positi— multiple hos— confirmed in the town. Scions mostly. At least a do— advise."

"Hold fire until we engage," Weiss ordered. Ind did not hop back on the comm, instead simply pinging to confirm that he had received the message clearly. Weiss shook her head. If they couldn't even communicate with one another, the squad would have to adjust their strategy fast. They'd have to improvise, and Weiss _hated_ improvising. As they neared the outer wall of the village, Weiss' optical display highlighted a trio of Scions mindlessly hacking into a portion of the wall. Their bladed limbs gouged furrows in the soft wood and crumbling stone, and seemingly impervious to pain they swung the appendages again and again for no discernable reason. Animalistic and savage, Weiss couldn't help but envision the grisly results of what happened when those blades met flesh and bone instead of an old wall.

"Hostiles in range," she pinged the squad. Five clicks quickly acknowledged, followed a split moment later by two more. Time delay or just sloppiness on Ind's part? A marksman was only as good as his spotter. "Moss take them down. Second squad, keep moving around the wall, look for another way in. Keep it tight and fall back to the ridgeline if need be." They acknowledged and hurried off. Moss moved up to Ruby and Weiss' side, prepping his Hydra. Thirty meters from the Scions, he keyed a series of commands in the holographic display on the weapon before burying its butt-end three inches into the ground, so that the barrel jutted diagonally in the direction of the Grimm. Putting some distance between himself and the weapon, he remotely triggered the Hydra with a literal flick of his wrist.

A three- foot-long steel cylinder rocketed twenty meters forward and ten meters high with a sound like a paper bag popping. A second, snap-like sound followed as the rod splintered into three thinner versions of itself. At speeds far too great for the human eye to comprehend, the javelin-like projectiles homed in on their targets, keening a high-pitched whistle, before impacting meatily and boring straight through the unprepared Grimm. All three Scions fell bodily – dead before they hit the ground – and the Hydra whirred mechanically as the three missiles were pulled back toward the tube by fishing- line-thin cords of metal.

Ruby stood stunned. The Hydra was new tech, just passed down to the squad the previous week. Only Weiss, Argen, and Moss had seen it in action thus far. Though she could not see, Weiss knew the umber-skinned man was beaming beneath his faceplate. He spooled up the rods and slung the Hydra back over his shoulder. Weiss gave the signal to advance, and once again all three charged forward, through the gates and into the village. Already, the dead Scions were smoking and dissipating into the air. Weiss hoped that the sound of the Hydra firing, muted as it might have been, had not given them away too soon.

They shot down the central road quickly, past abandoned houses and simple storefronts. A lone Beowolf sniffed the air curiously ten meters ahead as they rounded a corner. It scarcely had time to turn before Weiss darted forward, driving Mytenaster to the hilt through the back of its head. The bony faceplate cracked outward as the blade emerged from between the creatures' eyes and slumped to the ground. Briefly, they held position as Weiss attempted to establish comms with the overwatch team. Nothing but static. She cursed inwardly. As though mocking her, the distant darkling sky flashed briefly with lightning, and a moment later the thunder resounded through the earth, like the malevolent laughter of some spiteful god.

"No comms," Ruby said quietly, echoing Weiss' thoughts. Then, a moment later, "I'm sure they're fine."

Moss _harrumphed._ "It'd take a lot more than a bit of thunder and lightning to put Argen out of it," he droned, his basso voice rumbling out of his helmet like a controlled landslide.

Weiss squared her shoulders. _Be safe, big guy._ "Whatever the case, we can't waste time trying to reestablish contact. We have a job to do." As though on cue, a crash split the tense quiet from three blocks over, followed by a scream – that was cut short. Weiss swore again, aloud this time. "Keep it tight, we need to check that out."

The trio cut between two buildings – one of which, Weiss noted grimly, looked as though a car had driven through it, all splintered wood and torn wax paper – and positioned themselves at another junction, peering across the way. A light flickered in one of the houses, wavering orange and red, as black smoke began to billow out of the open doors and windows. A large black-furred figure, twice Weiss' height even in armor and with apelike arms too long for its body ending in sharp curved claws, lumbered down the street heading away from them. It dragged a limp body behind it, loosely gripped in one clawed hand. A woman in her mid-20s, face barely recognizable as it was dragged through the half-mudded street.

Weiss felt a twinge of unease. A Helsenge. She'd only seen one once before – they were rare, usually restricted to the very furthest fringes of the kingdoms. So what the _hell_ was one doing less than two-hundred miles from Mistral?

"Whoa," Ruby whispered beside her, mingled awe and fear coloring her voice. "Haven't seen one of those in a while."

"Ma'am," Moss growled beside her. "I'm still reading vitals from that woman. She's still alive."

"Where's it taking her?" Ruby asked, her tone betraying her horror at the implications of her own question.

Weiss exhaled through her nose, a darkness creeping on the edges of her consciousness that she stubbornly pushed away. _Control._

"Doesn't matter," she said sharply. "It's never going to get there." She punctuated her sentence by charging forward, controlled rage funneled into a lightning-quick advance. Moss and Ruby hastened to follow, the latter unfurling Crescent Rose for the first time since landing and relishing the balance of the weapon as she propelled herself forward.

There had been a time not too long ago when Weiss couldn't beat Ruby anywhere. The red-cloaked girl had always been first to the front of the line, first into the room, first into the fray.

 _First to fall._

 _Oh hell,_ Weiss thought, mind breaking down individual thoughts and complex reactions into microseconds of rationalization and internal debate, before shoving it all to the side. _Focus._ Ruby had beaten her everywhere once. Not so much anymore.

Weiss' blade bit deep into the left arm of the Helsenge, thrusting through muscle, sinew, and between bones before jutting out the other side. The creature's grip immediately slackened and the unconscious woman slumped to the ground. Without releasing her grip on Myrtenaster's hilt, Weiss flicked the trigger and spun the Dust cartridge to red. Immediately a searing heat pulsed out from the blade, threatening to singe Weiss' eyebrows even through the helmet. A flash burst from the rapier's hilt and Weiss leapt deftly backwards as Ruby hit the creature like a truck.

Whirling through the air, she slashed three times at the creature before it even turned to confront the threat, gouging deep wounds in its thick hide and sending flecks of black ichor spraying across the ground. Her momentum slowed, she pivoted in the air, kicking the back of the monster's head. A pair of cracks echoed through the fury, and Ruby rocketed backwards with the force of the high-caliber blasts that had blown from the heels of her feet through the Helsenge's head. In the fray, Moss strode in deftly, scooped up the unconscious woman, and retreated to a safe distance even as Weiss and Ruby landed to assess the results of their assault.

Much to their chagrin, the creature still stood. Its left arm was a melted ruin from the elbow down, and its head smoked and hissed as hot blood oxidized. Ruby clicked her red heels together, two more rounds sliding into their chambers as the Helsenge lumbered about to face them. Even as they watched, black liquid dribbled like oil down from the crown of its head and its upper arm, sinew and muscle regenerating at a freakish rate. _No time,_ Weiss chastised herself, launching forward for another attack even as Ruby had the same thought.

This time the Grimm was ready for them. Its still-good arm swung in a wide arc and Weiss jumped into a mid-air roll to avoid the blow, feeling for all the world like a tree had just tried to backhand her. She landed deftly and spun the revolver chamber again, Myrtenaster's blade glowing a cold blue before she thrust the weapon again and a swarm of cyan motes like tiny daggers hurled through the air toward the creature. It brought its arm up to shield its wounded face and allowed Ruby the window she needed. Crescent Rose's blade swung underhand and pierced the creature's shoulder. It gave a horrid, gurgling howl of pain that only redoubled as Ruby used the weapon to vault over its back, pulling it backwards in a Limbo-bend as she slammed both feet into its lower back and fired again. Hot black blood sprayed over Weiss' armored faceplate, and she seized the advantage. The Helsenge tried to use its reach to grab Ruby from behind, but before it could Weiss leapt ten feet in the air and drove Myrtenaster downward into the ruin of its lower skull, as though forcing the great beast to swallow the sword. It shuddered violently before falling heavily, flesh disintegrating around Weiss' blade. She caught Ruby's eye and suppressed the urge to laugh.

Her partner said what she was thinking. "Just like old times."

Their celebrations were short-lived, as a howl echoed through the streets. Ruby turned to the cross-street, where a small pack of Beowolves was already thundering toward them. Ruby gave her weapon a cocksure flourish and nodded to Weiss before bracing herself to receive all comers. For her own part, Weiss ran over to where Moss was kneeling beside the still-unconscious woman.

"She's breathing," he said, "but badly hurt. Ribs are shattered, and she had a punctured lung. She's going to die soon if we don't get her help, boss."

"Copy," Weiss replied dryly, the joy of her victory already turning to ashes in her mouth. How many other people in this village were dying right now? How many were already dead? Her next words felt as though they were choking her as she said them. "We can't spare the time to get her out of the line of fire. Find her a safe place, stabilize her as best you can, but we need to press on to the objective."

Her optical display showed that Moss' heartrate spiked as she spoke. "Moss," she began, before he waved a hand to cut her off.

"I understand ma'am. Mission first."

 _He has a family. A wife. Children._ She felt a twinge of guilt. _How much harder is it for him to let go?_

Weiss was shaken from her musing as something knocked her off her feet. She tumbled bodily through the air before getting a hold of herself and landing in a three-point stance twenty meters away. An Ursa the size of a truck roared at Moss as it stood where she had been a moment earlier, having bulldozed its way through the burning home that the Helsenge had dragged the woman from. Now it was bearing down on her subordinate and the helpless woman. She dashed towards it, time seeming to slow as Moss drew his sidearm and fired point-blank into the creature's armored hide to no avail. She closed the distance faster than any human should be able to. Ten meters away. Five. She saw the beast rearing back to strike, a crushing downward blow that would cleave through Moss and the woman he was protecting.

Protecting. She could see it. He was blocking her body with his own, probably hoping that his armored form could shield her from the blow. Maybe against a smaller foe, but not something this big, this powerful. The realization hit her all at once.

I'm not going to make it in time.

The molasses pace at which the world crawled shattered all at once as the Ursa's head disintegrated into a cloud of blood and bone fragments. The morass spattered over Moss, soaking him in gore but, in novel fashion, shielding the woman. Weiss' step faltered, and she glanced around for the source of the shot, her eye drawn through the smoke and flames of the burning home to a nearby ridge, where a pair of luminous blue silhouettes lay belly-down in the grass. She could've sworn the bigger one gave her a thumbs-up.

Moss dragged the woman from the fray into the shelter of a nearby house, leaning her against the wall as Ruby and Weiss dispatched the last of the Beowolves and Scions that had closed on them after the commotion. As Moss dosed the woman with a syringe of Stonegut – a powerful tranquilizer that slowed the heartrate, giving the illusion of death and, more importantly, reducing vital function so as to avoid exsanguination, rapid circulation of toxins, and harmful breathing – before picking up his Hydra and rejoining the other two. With a moment of quiet, Weiss keyed her comm again.

"This is Gigas Actual. All squads, report in."

A brief moment of static followed before clarity took hold. "This is Gigas 2-1," came Argen's voice. "Scope is clear, Actual. You're welcome for the assist, by the way."

Weiss halted a breathy laugh as she heard her friend's voice ring through her ears again. "Gigas 3, respond," she said, reminding herself that she still had three soldiers unaccounted for. No response. She repeated the hail, "Gigas 3, this is Gigas Actual, respond."

A crash caused all three soldiers to turn at once, weapons swishing, humming, and clicking alternatively. Weiss' eyes scanned the empty street for a long moment before a trio of blue-ringed figures emerged… with a host of others. Nearly two-dozen people in plain clothes, some walking, others borne about on litters. Jade and Alba checked corners as Roux directed the people into the same building where Moss had set the wounded woman. He strode up in front of Weiss, and she noticed the three-inch gash in the duroplex. His helmet slithered back into his armor and she could see that whatever had carved through his faceplate had done a number on his face too. His left eye was a red ruin, and blood streaked down from his brow to his cheek.

"Good to see you Commandant," he said, husky baritone slurred ever-so-slightly by anti-pain meds. "Well. Half of you."

"What the hell happened?" she asked, eschewing any veneer of professionalism.

The ruddy-skinned man shrugged. "Scion got the jump on me. It won't happen again." He racked his shotgun for emphasis, and she gave him a chastising look from beneath her own helm.

"Why didn't you answer your comms?" she asked.

"Too much interference, and by the time the signal cleared up, we were just around the corner from you." She glared at him blankly from behind the mask. He shrugged. "Dramatic effect."

" _Uh, Actual? Hate to break up the party but we've got something,_ " came Ind's voice through the comm. Weiss pinged, wordlessly instructing him to continue. " _The storm's letting up but uh… well, something freaky is going on in the center of town, three blocks south-southeast of your position._ "

"What do you mean 'something freaky?'" she asked. A clap of thunder and a bolt of lightning arcing from the clouds and striking less than two-hundred meters away was her answer. She didn't waste any more time. "Squad, form up on me."

"Weiss," Ruby hissed from her side. "What about them?" Her partner gestured with Crecent Rose toward the group of civilians, most of whom were watching Weiss with terrified, shell-shocked eyes. They needed to get out of the vicinity. Whatever was going on in the town square, it was bad, and these people were defenseless.

 _Mission comes first. It's all-but guaranteed now that the target it here, whatever it is. But who knows what will happen if you take the time to get them to safety? And against an unknown threat, you need all hands on deck – can't spare anyone._

She bit her lip as another thunderclap drowned out Ruby's repetition of her name. This time, two bolts of lightning streaked from opposite sides of the sky and converged as they struck just beyond a row of houses. Beyond, something roared. The civilians cowered, even Weiss' own squad glancing nervously at one another.

 _White is cold._

"We can't spare any time for them," Weiss said. There was a momentary outcry from someone – maybe Ruby, maybe Moss – which quickly choked itself. "Leave them whatever weapons, ammo, and meds you can spare but we have to _move._ Alba, signal the ship. If we hurry, whatever is over those buildings will be dead before Sierra even gets here."

The young woman nodded silently, drew a pistol from her hip, and fired a streak of red light skyward to where it burst high above the rooftops. Another crash of thunder, more lightning, and another roar. _What the hell is that thing?_ Weiss wondered, before shaking off the lingering doubt. The die was cast. No time to lose.

She turned away from the faces of the civilians, not letting her gaze catch on any of theirs as they pleaded with their eyes for a salvation she could only attempt to grant them. But she was not an angel. She was not a savior. She was just a woman. A soldier. Her helmet pinged the commands, her soldiers chirped their acknowledgement, some just a hair's breadth after the others.

"Gigas Squadron move out!"

* * *

 **A/N**

And that's chapter 2! Significantly beefier than the first, for a reason. There was a lot to establish during this chapter, and the next one will be somewhat similar. I also firmly believe that action cannot be rushed, and as such I took the time to focus on the descriptive elements. Expect high-action chapters to be longer, as a rule of thumb.

Also, I am estatic with how much attention this has been getting. Almost 600 views and a bevy of favorites and follows in the first week is more than I had dared to hope for. I'm glad that people are enjoying what I have so far, and am thrilled at the prospect of making this a long-term project. As always, your reviews and suggestions are welcomed – I am by no means a professional, so any advice freely given is advice I'll be happy to accept.

On that note, **huge** shout-out to NoGround, my fabulous proofreader and editor on this monstrosity. Working with him has been a great help so far, and I look forward to continuing to do so for as long as he'll put up with me.

Next week the focus will shift a bit, but don't take that as meaning it'll be boring. We'll get back to Ruby and Weiss soon enough. Thanks for reading.

* * *

 **Glossary**

PGW: "Post- Great War," the equivalent our modern "Common Era" abbreviation. Days, weeks, and months are the same for the convenience of both me and you. For context, the first season of the show took place 80 years after the Great War, so 80 PGW.

Vacuan: from and/or of Vacuo.

Synthskin, Duroplex: fancy buzzwords that sound vaguely futuristic. In all seriousness, think of Synthskin like a form-fitting bodysuit that insulates and offers minor protection against things like scratches and burns, fibrous in nature and flexible if not particularly resilient; usually worn under heavier body armor. Duroplex is essentially a ridiculously-tempered amorphous solid, like glass but much, much harder.

Charybdian: as Charybdis, a Greek sea monster that swallowed and regurgitated the sea. Faced by Odysseus on his journey home.

ROE: rules of engagement, military directive establishing protocols, circumstances, and limitations for combat

Faunus: for first-timers or those unfamiliar with the show, since I know this is the first time I've mentioned them. The faunus are a race of intelligent humanoids also native to Remnant, identical to humans except for various animal features, such as ears, tails, claws, scales, or horns. Throughout their history, they've faced discrimination and even purges at the hands of the human majority, culminating in a violent war and the relocation of many Faunus to the smallest of Remnant's continents, Menagerie.


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER 3**

* * *

" _We've been fighting amongst ourselves for too long. Perhaps it's time for a new brotherhood: a new family for Faunus truly working towards a better world."_

Ghira Belladona, former High Leader of the White Fang and Chieftain of Menagerie

* * *

 **August 9, 91 PGW**

Blake never got used to the morning meetings.

It wasn't that she was uncomfortable rising early – quite the contrary, she enjoyed a brusque start followed later in the day by non-negotiable periods of convalescence – but rather that a meeting of this sort at the time of day when most people still hadn't gotten dressed meant that the entire rest of the day followed in its footsteps: good news early in the morning could set you in a high spirit until you laid down to sleep. On the other hand, bad news – or more often than not just news that wasn't particularly good – set a precedent that the rest of the day seemed to follow like an obligation. Ill news begets more and more of the same.

And these days, the meetings were rarely anything _but_ ill news.

She pushed herself through the hanging drapery that served as a "door" between her kitchen and main living space. Two of her guards in their black fur mantles lounged in the den of the spacious Kuo Kuana apartment, giving her respectful nods as she entered and sipped her tea. They weren't much pleased about being up before the sun either; Blake knew the guards drew straws on this particular shift. That probably ought to inspire some sort of discontent in her – the knowledge that her guards gambled on whether or not they _wouldn't_ have to safeguard her life on a given day – but she honestly found it endearing. Regardless of whatever they, or anyone else on Menagerie, might thing, they were still the same blood.

"Any pressing issues?" she asked lazily, fighting off a yawn and taking another sip of tea for good measure. The older of the two men – Tang, she thought his name was – stood from the couch and gave a respectful bow before pulling out a scroll and showing it to Blake. She noticed the shift in the attitude of both the men immediately; what she had initially mistaken for simple early-morning sluggishness was replaced by something else. Something… uncomfortable. Pained. She looked to the scroll and nearly dropped her tea. Against the inky darkness of a late-Summer night, a block of houses burned. Bodies lay scattered across the lawns and street in front of the conflagration like a child's scattered toys, some writing in pain, others deathly still. It was not a news feed: a bystander had captured the recording on their scroll, the timestamp in the corner revealing that it had occurred only a couple of hours earlier, while Blake had been sleeping.

The one holding the camera, their hands shaking, panned to an open space on the ground, where two burning wolf skulls snarled at one another, crackling in red-orange flame. The words emblazoned beneath the symbol seared themselves into Blake's mind, as they had the first time she read them.

" _Let all who refuse to rise, fall."_

Her hand shook around the handle of the teacup, and she set the delicate dish down to flex her fingers several times, working her way through the fear and rage that mingled in her mind at the sight of the brazen attack. An attack on her people. An attack on her. She knew the buildings that were burning; three days ago, she had visited that side of the island – a small, close-knit community whose simple lives she hoped she could make just a little bit easier. She had listened to the complaints of the adults, given gifts to the children, posed for photographs that were on the front page of every newspaper in Menagerie the next day. She hadn't intended for it to become a publicity stunt; it was never meant that way, though it seemed like everything she did these days became just that.

Now though, the warmth she had felt in the act, the small satisfaction she allowed herself in seeing the way that the public had sought to emulate her – making donations, helping their neighbors – all turned to ash in her mouth. She tasted bile. She wanted to scream.

The _bastards._

"How many people were hurt?" Blake asked in a small voice. Tang inhaled sharply, and she knew she wouldn't like the answer. "Tell me," she ordered, voice hard.

"Twelve dead. Many more wounded, and several… unaccounted for." There was a pained quality in the last note.

She rounded on him. "They took them?"

He shook his head. "We aren't sure yet. It could be that they fled into the desert when the village was attacked. In that case, they could still be out there. We have people scouting the surrounding area—"

"The ones who are missing," Blake said, struggling to keep her tone level. "Were they children?"

His silence was all the confirmation she needed. Blake sighed heavily, a hand rising to her face as she shook her head in amazement at the cruelty her own kind could inflict on each other. "How could this have happened?" she asked no one in particular. Fittingly, no one answered. Then, the hollow shock and horror she had felt at the atrocity turned to a white-hot anger. She turned to face her guards again. "Why wasn't I woken? This happened hours ago, why am I only finding out about it now?"

"Because I told them not to wake you," came a voice from the doorway. A steady voice. A familiar voice. A voice absent of all of its characteristic warmth, all of its joviality. Blake dropped her head into one hand again.

"Why would you do that, Sun?"

Her captain of the guard stood flanked by several more of Blake's household sentinels, their gazes averted. His was riveted on her though. She turned to meet his attention and immediately knew where he had been. His tanned face was darkened by soot and streaked by lines where sweat had cut through the filth. His hair was an ashen tousle, his jaw was shadowed by stubble, and his eyes were red and ringed by dark circles. His clothes were torn in a couple of places, and irrevocably stained by smoke everywhere else. He initially ignored her, striding away from his cluster of guards – most in a similar state of disarray – and across the room to a small table where a crystal decanter of amber liquid stood beside several glasses. He deftly poured himself two fingers of the liquor and threw them back without missing a beat, before finally turning back to Blake.

"Didn't want to disturb your sleep," he answered simply, as though that was all that needed to be said. His voice was hoarse. He clearly saw her expression and sighed, setting the empty tumbler back on the table. "I figured we had the situation under control; by the time we got there, the fires were still burning. We thought that meant it was a fairly recent incident and we could contain it quickly." He fell onto one of the couches. "We were wrong though," he said bitterly. He jabbed a thumb at the scroll, which Blake still held in one hand. "What that video doesn't show you is that the one filming it was a perpetrator. We got that feed coming in, figured someone was still alive on the ground. We were right, except that it was the Leafs who were waiting."

Blake's eyes widened. "They ambushed you?"

Sun nodded. "Tried to. They were disorganized though. Sloppy. We spotted the trap before we even got out of the airship. Most of them scattered anyway, didn't have the guts to take on a fully-armed Civil Guard response team."

Something didn't sit right with Blake. "Why would they scatter so quickly after taking the time to set up an ambush? To bait you in?"

Sun scoffed. "Simple: it wasn't about the ambush at all. That was probably an afterthought." His voice softened slightly, but Blake could still hear the hardness behind it. He was angry. Rightly so. He had accompanied her to the village. "No," he said, "it wasn't about the ambush. It was about sending a message. How did you react when you saw that footage?"

She blinked, realizing what he was getting at. "I was angry. Shocked. Appalled." All understatements. Not to mention that she still was all of those things, and more.

The blond man nodded sagely. "Me too. That was their agenda. They wanted us to react, they wanted us to get mad, to cry, to break down." His eyes were flinty, and something dark crept into his tone. "And it half-worked. I'm mad, but I sure as hell didn't break down." He stood again and strode across the small space to look her dead in the eye. "Don't you get it, Blake? This is what we were warned about. This is what he meant."

The words send a chill down Blake's spine – an unbidden memory of a knife in the dark, screaming, blood. She pushes the thoughts away, along with his voice, whispering and choking on the words that had haunted her ever since. _"All that you have built will crumble; they will turn your joy to sorrow, and when you thrash against the current, begging them to save you from what you have made for yourself, they will let you drown."_ She shuddered.

"Sun," she said quietly. "Who else knows? How public is this?"

"We've kept a lid on it. The news hasn't gotten out yet. That gives us time to think of what we're going to tell the people." Always thinking about the public image, trying to preserve her sainthood in the eyes of the people. Blake mused at that. There had been a time not too long ago when Sun Wukong would've said damn it all to what anyone else thought, and just done what was right. Sometimes she wondered if she had made the right choice, asking him to come back to Menagerie with him after the Salm Crisis. The island had changed him.

 _Not just him_ , she corrected herself inwardly.

Blake sighed. "We ought to tell them the truth. They have a right to know and keeping it secret will only make it worse when it eventually comes out. Secrets are like bad wounds; they get worse the longer you leave them unattended and hope they go away."

He winced, whether at her opinion or the metaphor was hard to say. "I don't disagree, but are you sure that's our best option right now? Think about it Blake, this is the other half of their plan: we know they're trying to send a message to the public, and we know what it says: 'don't trust Blake, don't support Blake, don't accept Blake's charity, or bad things will happen to you.' It's the White Fang all over again."

"No," Blake said firmly, startling Sun somewhat. "This is not the same. The White Fang, even at their most misguided, were still fighting for the Faunus. Maybe Adam was different, but the many of the people in the White Fang still believed they were doing what was best for their species." She strode to the wide, curtain windows that looked out over the town. Smoke was beginning to rise from chimneys, the first rays of rosy dawn creeping over the horizon. It was beautiful, and it broke her heart to know that beneath the surface of this idyll she was still fighting many of the same battles she had been a decade ago, that her father had been a decade before that.

"This 'Liberation Front' is _nothing_ like the White Fang. Not the White Fang of my father, not the White Fang of Sienna Khan, not even Adam's White Fang." She turned to face Sun and her guards, all of whom were at rapt attention. She never captured the spirit of her father – whom many of them had served – more than when she got angry. "The White Fang were freedom fighters. Misguided, yes, but still fighting for a cause, for the rights of the Faunus. The Liberation Front are nothing more than criminals: the last of a stubborn breed that refuses to bend to change, that insists on repeating the same mistakes that have almost doomed us so many times before." She held up the scroll and pointed to the still image of the burning buildings, the bodies. "This isn't the work of freedom fighters, no matter what they might label themselves. This is an attack on _me._ On _us._ On our vision, and the dreams of the Faunus, the _future_ of the Faunus."

She tossed the scroll onto the table, punctuating her statement with the hollow clack as it landed. No one in the room dared divert their attention, not that any would. "They're criminals," she repeated, the disdain palpable in her voice. "Thieves. Vandals. Kidnappers. And now arsonists and murderers as well. My father told me once that retribution must be tempered with mercy: that vengeance begets vengeance and death begets death. And he was right. But I will not stand by idly while these cowards burn and kill as a political statement and call it justice.

"Their own motto will come to ring much more truly for them, soon enough," she said. "They refuse to rise out of the darkness and barbarism of their bygone age. So be it. Let them fall back into their pit and stay there."

* * *

That night, Blake sat alone in the library. The small, cluttered room, its walls stacked floor-to-ceiling with books from all over the world, had been her only request for the apartment. She wanted a place to read, to think, to reflect. She sighed inwardly and turned over the book in her hands. Though it felt heavy and leaden in her hands, she couldn't help but find herself drawn to it when she had entered the room at the end of a day that had seemed to stretch half a lifetime.

Much had been said and done, much agreed-upon: plans made and set in motion, addresses delivered to the people. The citizens of Menagerie knew now what the so-called Liberation Front had done in the name of a justice they failed to recognize as terror. Blake had promised to be strong, to show these cowards that their attacks on innocent civilians would not soften her retribution towards them when it came, nor dissuade her from her course. She had taken solace in the cheers of the crowd, the adoration they expressed for her stoicism in the face of adversity. Yet she couldn't help but notice the quiet ones – the ones at the back of the crowd who turned and strode away when her message was done, their eyes low and their cheers tellingly silent.

 _No going back now, Blake. You're a huntress, a chieftess, and a leader to Faunus all over the world. You can't afford to run away or doubt yourself. Not anymore._

She fingered the worn pages of the book in her hands. A rare find; it was banned in all of the kingdoms. She'd had to buy it from a back-room seller in Mistral at triple the cost she'd usually pay for something of its sort. Today though, she didn't regret the purchase. Her thumb brushed over the worn leather cover, over the simple words embossed in white thread: words that still elicited fear and hatred in the minds of so many, human and faunus alike.

 _Third Crusade._

She had first read the book when she was a teenager – barely more than a girl, really. It was a gift from Adam. He had told her to study it, to memorize every passage, to digest every word. _"This,"_ he had said, _"is the story of our people when we were strong: when we were unafraid to do what has to be done in order to secure the future of our families and loved ones. Tell no one you're reading it, because there are still those even among our people who would see you as a traitor for refusing to believe the lies they try to spread. This is who humanity is, Blake, detailed her in these pages. And this is who we need to become if we want to fight them."_

Suddenly disgusted, she set the book aside. Not that she couldn't still quote every passage from it if she wanted to. The words were burned in the back of her brain, like a brand, reminding her of who she had once belonged to heart-and-soul.

The dusty old room seemed to swallow her silence. Motes of light cast soft shadows from lamps on the end tables and ceiling. Hundreds of years of accumulated knowledge from all over the kingdoms: myths, legends, histories and novels alike resided here. There were stories to read when you needed to relax. Or, as the case may be, when one needed to remind oneself of an old lesson that had fallen out of memory.

Blake picked up _Third Crusade_ again, barely noticing that her hands had begun to tremble. She flipped the well-worn leaves, flecks of dust rising as she bypassed two-hundred pages of proselytizing and listing of atrocities committed against the faunus: homes burned, children kidnapped and brainwashed, political messages delivered through fear and bloodshed. _Hmph,_ she thought scornfully. _The Liberation Front ought to have a crack at this one. Might give them a change of perspective._ _Would that it was so easy._

She finally found herself on the last page, her eyes resting on the motif of a handsome, dark-faced man in his mid-30s. His long red hair trailed behind him – red because she knew it was, and not because the image showed it – and the wilting rose tattoo that slithered up his neck and collar seemed to burn red-hot. The list of accolades at the bottom was impressive, even to her: veteran of the Human-Faunus War, founding member of the White Fang, and once upon a time her father's best friend. Author of _Third Crusade_. Faunus rights activist. Murdered at a rally in Vacuo by anti-faunus protestors.

Adam Taurus… senior.

A sound behind her made Blake slam the book shut, rounding on whoever had intruded. She wasn't surprised to see Sun standing in the doorway, holding a bottle and two glasses. She sighed. "Haven't you had enough to drink today?" she asked, thinking of their first interaction. The sun hadn't even risen by then, no pun intended.

He shrugged. "Figured we could _both_ use something to calm our nerves." Without brokering further protest, he crossed the small room and fell into the chair opposite Blake's. She slid the book out of view as he did, wondering if she had made a mistake ever taking it off the shelf. She felt a twinge of guilt for trying to hide it from him but couldn't shake the doubt that he would understand why she was even giving it the time of day. She watched as Sun poured two glasses of the smoky, dark brown liquid and passed one over to her, which she took but did not indulge in immediately.

"Is everything in order?" she asked brusquely.

He sighed. Straight to business. "Everything's in order," he confirmed. "Extra guard postings, soft enforcement of curfew, screening on travel, everything. We've got the best trackers searching for the kids who went missing during last night's attack, and feelers out everywhere to try and catch their recruiters in the act."

"And Ilya?"

"She's on her way back."

Blake let herself breathe a sigh of relief. Having Sun here by her side was refreshing, but Ilya was her oldest friend, despite the rockiness that their relationship had gone through. Still, it stirred something inside Blake's chest – a gnawing concern that had been plaguing her since the meeting this morning.

"Sun," she asked suddenly. The blond man looked up from his glass, already half-empty while hers was untouched. "What I said earlier… my father telling me to temper vengeance with mercy…" She looked up from her own glass to meet his gaze. "Do you think I made the right decision? Calling for this crackdown?"

He hesitated, and she sighed. Then, Sun spoke, his voice assured but level. "I think you need to stop asking me for verification of everything you do. I'm your advisor, and I like to think I'm your friend, but I'm not someone you need to prove yourself to or whose approval you need to seek."

"It's not like that," she said. "I just… years ago I forgave Weiss for her family's crimes against our people. I forgave Ozpin for lying to us about the true dangers out there in the world." She stood, the liquid in her glass sloshing precariously. "I forgave Ilya, even after she betrayed me. Even after she hurt you, tried to hurt my family, turned her back on everything I thought we had together, all the years of friendship…" her voice trailed off, growing small. "Even after she betrayed me," she repeated. "I forgave her. And I have never once regretted that decision. I've never regretted _any_ of those decisions. I firmly believed both then and now that every one of those instances of forgiveness was the right call." She turned to face her partner in crime, her steadfast protector – even when she hadn't wanted him to be – her captain of the guard, her advisor and her confidante.

"So why can't I bring myself to forgive these people now?" There were tears in her eyes, pearling at the corners. Behind her, the floor-to-ceiling shelves carried the lessons and tragedies and triumphs of a dozen generations. She had read them all. So why did she keep making the same mistakes that people had been making for centuries?

Sun's face was a mask, but she knew him well enough to see the cracks – the pain he hid behind those mischievous eyes. She was waiting for the inevitable wisecrack, the sarcasm, the carefree dismissal of the world's ugliness.

"I don't know," he said simply. Blake was taken aback. "I don't know," he repeated as he stood, setting down his glass and taking a measured step toward her. "I can't say I would have forgiven Ilya all those years ago, or Weiss, or whoever. But you did, and you haven't been wrong yet."

She barked a short, derisive laugh. "Sun, I've been wrong more times than I can count—"

"And yet here we are," he shot back, with a raised eyebrow. "Sure, there've been bumps along the way, but we're still alive. We still have a chance to make a real difference in the world, to do what so many of the people in these old books of yours couldn't: fix the world, make it a truly better place. Hell, we've already saved the world what, two or three times? Not a bad record." He put a callused hand on her shoulder, their eyes locked. "You've chosen to forgive time and again, and it hasn't been a mistake. That means there's something in you, whether it's up here," he tapped her forehead for emphasis, "or in here," another tap, this time on her chest, "that's good at making the right call. I trust the decision you made today just as much as I trusted those other decisions. And believe me, I know people."

She smiled for the first time that day, absentmindedly brushing away the beading tears. "I don't understand how you stay this confident. It's actually a little annoying."

He winked, and that was the end of the matter. He finished his drink and excused himself, leaving her alone with her own drink and the books. _So many stories_. She chewed on the concept. _I wonder if a hundred years from now they'll read a book about me. And what ever will they say when they do?_

"Hey Blake," he shot back over his shoulder. She turned to face him and saw something that made her heart grow light: something she found in tragically short supply these days, with all the new troubles they faced. Something that reminded her of happier, easier times. He held the bottle of liquor with his tail, inclining it slightly with an impish grin. "Cheers," he said with another wink and a quiet chuckle, before stepping through the doorway and out into the darkened hall beyond.

Blake let out a small sigh of contentment, in spite of herself. _I hope that whatever book gets written mentions him. He's too good of a man to be lost to history._

* * *

 **A/N**

And that's another chapter over and done with. I apologize sincerely that this one took a bit longer to get out, the last couple of weeks have been hectic to say the least. Now that things are starting to level out though I should be able to get back into the swing of things and have another chapter out around this time next week. I know it's dangerous to make promises, but I appreciate your patience and continued support.

Having said that, **first Blake chapter, yay!** I admit, Blake is definitely the character I've struggled the most with as far as writing goes so far. She's a character whose motivations and reactions are difficult for me to always empathize with, and so it can be hard getting into her mindset in order to write her PoVs. Still, I'm excited with the direction that her story is going to go. I choose to try and write the characters and then let their decisions in situations guide the plot, rather than having a strict outline and railroading the characters onto it. This is especially crucial with characters that already have established personalities.

Next chapter we'll get back to the action. As always, mad shout out to Bach and NoGround, my muse and editor respectively. Dish had a crazy-ass week, cranking out all sorts of fun new stuff that'll be exciting to work into the story in new ways. Anyway, thanks again for reading, please feel free to leave a comment, review, or suggestion.


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER 4**

* * *

" _You fear that which you do not understand – that which you can never comprehend. And that fear only makes us stronger."_

"The Queen"

* * *

 **August 9, 91 PGW**

The village's name was Bluecrest. On every seventh day, the locals would bring produce and livestock from nearby pastures and backyard gardens. Children would run between tents and stalls, shouting and laughing as their parents swapped wares, stories, the latest gossip of the small town. At this time of year, they'd be preparing to pull in the harvest, bringing new life and bounty to the market in preparation for the winter that was to come. The sun would shine on the village and its people, all of whom would go about their lives heedless of the horrid machinations that stalked the trees within sight of their walls.

Now, the houses lay in ruins, the sun was hidden behind dense black clouds, and the people huddled in the blasted remnants of backyard gardens as the horrors of the not-so-distant wilds stalked the streets.

Weiss took the bulk of the squad that was on the ground – Moss, Jade, and Roux – and flanked left between a small cluster of buildings. Ruby cast one last glance at the group of civilians, huddled in fear and shock in the blasted, shattered remains of their homes and businesses, and darted off to the right, Alba close on her heels. Crescent Rose seemed to hum in her hands, as though anticipating what was to come. As they pushed through a narrow alleyway, a Scion shambled out a doorway and gave a short shriek that was quickly cut off as Alba shot it three times: two high-caliber rounds to center-mass, and a third, ruthlessly clean shot through the center of its misshapen forehead.

Ruby admired the girl, born and raised on a small island off the southern coast of Solitas. The two young women shared that distinction, as well as their love for all things weapon-related. While not the best shot on the squad (that honor went unequivocally to Argen), Alba was a damn fine markswoman, and a savant when it came to weapons. She could strip, clean, and reassemble her sidearm in the midst of a firefight, and then use it to blow a hole in the head of anything stupid enough to try and interrupt her. She was stoic and quiet, never joining in the bantering or joking that was characteristic of others on the team like Ind or Jade, but always bringing everything she had to bear on missions.

The connection between Ruby and Alba ran deeper than their hobbies or their upbringings though; two years earlier, while scouting for the rest of the squad with Argen, Alba was separated from the older soldier by a pack of beowolves. She had fought them until her ammunition ran dry, and then some, but numbers overwhelmed her as Argen was himself pinned down and unable to render assistance. By the time the rest of the squad caught up and dispersed the Grimm, Alba was inches from death. She'd required extensive surgery and months of rehabilitation before she could return to the team, having lost both arms and a leg. Like Ruby, she was a product of a world that spared no pity and no mercy for those who overestimated themselves: a paragon of the uncomfortably common new trend of replacing that which was lost with that which was cutting-edge and useful. These days, there was none of the bureaucratic nightmare that Ruby had had to deal with even five years ago: Atlas military personnel had access to whatever they needed whenever they needed it; sometimes they had access even if there wasn't a need.

Another Scion jumped from a roof, spoiling its chance at surprising the two women by screaming horrifically before it leapt. Its cleaver-like arms carved furrows into the ground where Ruby had been a moment earlier, and she rode the momentum from her legs' springboard-like launch into the air to pivot, letting Crescent Rose hum and slicing cleanly through the center of the monster. It mewed pitifully on the ground for a moment before Alba caved it its head with the heel of her boot without a moment's hesitation. The two took off again, every tenth step or so punctuated with a brief, blinding flash of lightning and a pulsating clap of thunder. Ruby's helmet illuminated the pathway for her, highlighting the objective as Weiss had flagged it, designating approach vectors and possible hazards. A luminescent orange flag denoted the location of their target, the number beside it shrinking every second. A hundred meters. Ninety. Seventy-five.

Final preparations were made. Alba checked her weapons, Ruby took stock. Huntsmen were taught early on that fear was a natural reaction to facing creatures of Grimm; they were inherently terrifying beings, born of fear and other negative emotions and thus strengthened by them. As such, while fear at the idea of facing a Grimm was natural and understandable, it could not be allowed to become a liability. A Huntress like Ruby ought to be able to control that fear, and she could for the most part.

Sixty meters. Fifty.

But Ruby wasn't a Huntress anymore. Not technically; now she worked for Atlas, for Weiss and for General Ironwood. To them, fear was unacceptable – it strengthened humanity's greatest enemy, and that couldn't be tolerated. Ruby had always wondered if maybe that was part of why Atlas preferred to use androids instead of real soldiers; androids couldn't feel fear, couldn't feel hate, couldn't doubt themselves or their mission.

Forty-five. Thirty-five. Thirty.

But fear was impossible to ignore when facing the unknown. That was a given. And SRED was tasked with cataloguing and documenting the most effective ways to kill new Grimm – creatures that had never reared their ugly heads before. Every time they were deployed, it was up against something new, unidentified, or undocumented. Ruby had seen Deathstalkers the size of buses, Nevermores large enough to bring down airships; shape-shifters, screaming long-limbed nightmares, a literal _dragon_ , and far fouler things besides – things that still made her mind shrivel and curl in on itself to recall.

Still, it seemed as though the world was always capable of dredging up some fresh horror just for her.

Twenty meters. Ten.

Emerging into the town's main plaza, Ruby and Alba were assailed by a wall of flying debris. Foot-long splinters of wood, shattered bits of furniture, a hubcap. Lightning struck the ground less than ten meters away, blasting the cobblestones and making Ruby's ears ring. All around the square, household objects and pieces of the households themselves spiraled in the air, whipping around frantically like bathwater down the world's angriest drain. Even as they took the briefest of moments to perceive the situation, Ruby watched the sheer force of the wind peel the sliding wood-and-paper panel door off one of the houses, adding yet more debris to the cyclone.

Her HUD told her that the rest of the squad had arrived, and against the force of the wind she turned slightly to see four luminescent blue-silhouetted figures taking up position in another alleyway. She turned her focus back to the center of the storm. Wasn't the eye supposed to be the calmest part? Another bolt of lightning was her answer, this one striking a house and igniting it for the briefest moment, before the force of the wind caused the flame to sputter and die as quickly as it had caught.

At the center of this maelstrom lay… nothing. Ruby's eyes scanned the rooftops, the alleys, every inch of the square for the telltale black form of a Grimm. She didn't know what to expect, except that she expected _something_. But there was nothing.

"Weiss?" she said over the comm, having to strain slightly over the constant noise of the wind. "Weiss, where is it?"

"I don't know!" came the response, garbled but intelligible. "Stay on guard. Moss, Alba, cover the alleys. Everyone else, push to the center of the square. Watch the lightning."

"Watch the light-" came Alba's voice, incredulous. "It's _lightning._ If you see it coming it's already too damn late!"

Another bolt punctuated her sentence, and the squad crept forward, sidestepping the occasional shattered coffee table and trying not to wince every time a bolt of lightning almost fried one of them. Moss had set up his Hydra in the alleyway where Weiss' team had come through and was checking the rooftops for any sign of movement. If there was anything left in him of the man who only a minute ago had looked ready to spit in Weiss' face, it was gone now – tucked away behind an implacable gray mask. Alba had locked down her own alley and was in the process of deploying a Guardian – an automated turret – when something _took_ her.

It was almost too quick to catch. One second, she was there, the next she wasn't. Ruby was the only one who noticed, and barely had time to cry out before a series of shots rang clear over the wind, which by now was rising to a roar. The squad turned upward to the source of the sound and saw the muzzle flash of Alba's weapon, a spot of something black against the gray sky, and then their teammate falling. Alba twisted in mid-air, braced, and impacted the ground with a resounding thud and a force that cracked the cobblestones. Her legs – one prosthetic, one encased in powerful armor – dispersed the energy, and despite the circumstances, Ruby found a twinge of childish awe sparking at the sight.

The reverie was short-lived. Alba pointed, and the squad diverted their gaze upward, to high above the plaza. There, a hundred feet up, something was massing in the dark center of the storm. As though made from the wind and rain itself, the creature was jet-black but nearly transparent, appearing almost as a wisp or a puff of smoke. Indeed, it could be mistaken for such, were it not for the vaguely corporeal form, the dull red glow emanating from a singular cyclopean eye, and the fact that this "smoke" was hovering in the air during a hurricane. Even as the squad watched, it seemed to assume a more and more complete form. A humanoid torso, but with a long, trailing tail instead of legs. Great transparent wings stretched behind it, and long, cruel arms ending in great jagged pincers.

"Found our target," Roux chirped. The loss of his eye didn't seem to have dulled his wit.

"Fucker's bigger than I expected," Jade added sagely. "What's the plan, boss?" She directed this last to Weiss.

Their fearless leader wasted no time, and Ruby couldn't help but admire the speed with which she began rattling off orders, directions, and rules of engagement. There had been a time when Ruby had led a team of her own, much to Weiss' chagrin. The then-heiress had felt that Ruby lacked the maturity, sensibility, and foresight to give and execute effective commands in high-stress situations, and though Ruby faulted Weiss for the thought at the time, she had to admit now that the white-haired girl had been right. Ruby's strategies had usually involved hitting the target as hard as possible, not giving it a chance to react or respond. It was a high-risk, high-reward style that had benefited the hard-hitting members of the team but at the expense of Weiss, whose semblance and fighting style favored defense over offense, and reactive counterattacks instead of head-on strikes. In the years they had worked and fought together, no one would have denied that Weiss was a capable fighter – but, when the numbers were crunched, she also took the brunt of the punishment, and that was unfortunate for the member of the team with the least capacity to absorb that incoming damage.

In command, Weiss excelled. She had a mind like a machine, all analytics and probabilities, but it wasn't rigid or inflexible like it had once been. She no longer saw every battle like a fencing duel, or a sparring match, but instead recognized combat – especially modern combat – for what it was: a frantic melee with literal do-or-die stakes. Hesitation meant death, and Weiss wasn't just playing for herself anymore; she had a team to consider. She had learned many lessons over the last five years, some far harder than others, but seeing the results now there was only one clear conclusion to be drawn: at the head of a squad with whom she was well-acquainted in both the personal and occupational sense, Weiss was unbeatable.

"Moss, you're already back so keep your head down and track it. Don't let it give us the slip. Alba, Roux, Jade: you three are going to be our pickets. If I figure its strategy right, this thing is going to try and use the debris in the storm to distract and harry us. Don't let it. Shoot the big stuff before it has a chance to knock someone off their game and shoot that thing if it tries to pick one of us up again."

Above, the Grimm was still coalescing, every moment seeming to draw more of the darkness from the storm wheeling about it, growing larger and fouler. Its features became clearer: no longer one eye but two, great curved horns, and a tooth-filled maw. The pincer-like appendages on the ends of its limbs seemed to snap and gnash with a mind of their own, as though they were mouths unto themselves. Ruby shuddered involuntarily. It wasn't the ugliest thing she had killed, but it would be a contender.

"Ruby, you and I are going to draw its attention. We're the only ones who can maneuver effectively above-ground, so stay mobile. This thing is in its element."

"Got it, Weiss. How're we going to kill it though?" The monster's coalescence was slowing. Time was short.

"Alba, did it seem to react when you shot it?" Weiss asked quickly, seeing as Ruby did that their window for planning was rapidly closing.

"It didn't seem to like it," the woman agreed, "but I didn't see any blood or anything. Might've pissed it off more than anything else."

"Doesn't seem like ballistics are the way to go," Roux interpreted, voicing the same thought that Ruby was harboring after Alba's assessment. "Makes sense: what's the point of shooting a tornado?"

Weiss gave Myrtenaster a flourish as the creature, high-above, stretched its sinuous tail, cruel arms and tattered wings, giving a throaty, piercing roar. A twisted amalgamation of man, serpent, and dragon, it glared down at them with hateful red eyes and roared again. Weiss turned to Ruby, and for the barest moment their eyes locked – even through the opaque gray visors. Ruby gave a small, cocksure smile, and somehow she knew that Weiss returned it.

Then, they went to work.

Weiss twirled her rapier and Ruby felt the weightless sensation of a gravity glyph taking hold, before – following Weiss' lead – she jumped with all her strength. Her legs, the finest legs that Atlesian R&D could produce, rocketed her upward with assistance from the glyph, and she covered the hundred-or-so feet between her and the Grimm in a blink. Pirouetting in midair, she slashed once, twice, three times with Crescent Rose and felt… no impact. She didn't have time to swear.

The creature – whose torso ought to be in quarters right now – batted Ruby with its tail. It was like getting hit in the gut with a tree trunk, and Ruby found herself descending the hundred feet again just as quickly in reverse. Frantically, she pulled her body into a ball and turned before jutting her legs out behind her and firing both barrels as another gravity glyph sprung into being beneath her. She shot skyward again, seeing Weiss dancing back and forth between glyphs as she fenced with the creature. Sparks of white, blue, and red light flashed every few seconds as Weiss capitalized on her smaller size and greater maneuverability to pinpoint the gaps in the creature's defense.

 _Of course,_ Ruby thought as she rejoined the fray, feeling stupid for not picking up on it sooner. _Conventional weapons do nothing to it._ Time seemed to slow as Ruby, still ascending meteorically, pressed the center of her palm with her thumb. A click confirmed her action, and she rotated her thumb along the inside of her gauntleted hand, turning it 270 degrees before pressing the center again. Her hand grew hot and she quickly ran her hand along the curved edge of Crescent Rose's blade. The metal seemed to pulse white hot for a moment before setting into a duller, brick-red glow. All this in the space of time it took her to reach the creature again.

Weiss saw her coming and broke off her attack for a moment, giving Ruby a chance to get in a good lick. The creature saw Ruby coming – too late. Crescent Rose sang in her hands, the blade seeming to carve a red scar through the air, and a flash of light and sparks accompanied a scream of pain from the creature. One of the head-like appendages at the end of its arm spiraled off into the storm, disintegrating into a black wisp as it went.

 _Roux was right_ , Ruby thought as she whirled in the air and came back for another attack. _Shooting a tornado is useless, and so is trying to stab it. But Dust is the very stuff of nature itself – humankind can't tame nature, but nature can match itself blow for blow._

She settled into another attack. This time, the creature was ready, and lifted its good arm to both block and strike. The larger size of Crescent Rose, and the need for an arced swing to make an effective attack, prevented Ruby from scoring another hit, but Weiss took advantage of the creature's distraction and gave three quick, short cuts across its back. The monster snarled as Ruby flew past, turning in the air to land in a three-point stance on a rooftop far below. Weiss backflipped gracefully away from the creature, landing across the square from Ruby. Neither could see the other's expression, but the grin on Ruby's face and the half-smirk on Weiss' might as well have been painted on their visors.

Something hit Ruby. She rolled in the air, tumbling sideways and catching herself before a painful impact on the cobblestones. The table that had struck her – though it had felt more like a truck – spiraled off into the storm and was summarily cut in two by Weiss. Ruby turned to Roux, standing several meters away with his rifle raised.

"What happened to shooting the debris it flings at us?"

He shrugged and pointed to the red ruin of one eye socket. "You were in my blind spot." To make a point, he turned and fired a short burst from his rifle, vaporizing a high-backed wooden chair that was spinning towards Weiss.

Ruby shook her head and leapt from the ground to the roof and into the air again, legs assisting the movement. She approached the creature slower than before, when aided by the glyph, but noted with satisfaction that its focus was on Weiss this time. She clicked her heels, reloading, and immediately fired again, using the added momentum to dive into a roll. With Crescent Rose extended and her body tucked in tightly, she resembled a red-hot, razor-sharp pinwheel as she climbed. Something heavy and wooden hurtled toward her, only to turn to splinters a moment later as someone on the ground – probably Roux, for the sake of irony – did their job.

She timed her spin perfectly, and Crescent Rose's blade jammed downward into the thickest part of the creature's long tail. It gave a roar, and its good arm batted Weiss away before attempting to swing around at Ruby. The gnashing, eel-like jaws snapped closed bare inches from Ruby, and the creature gave a powerful flap of its great wings as it began to ascend higher. Lightning flashed as the arm snapped at Ruby again. She curled tightly around the creature's tail, even as it lashed back and forth in an attempt to throw her off. Thick, dark blood gushed from the wound, and every movement caused the blade to move, increasing the creature's pain. There was something almost pitiful in its increasingly-frantic cries of pain. Almost.

"Ruby!" came Weiss' cry over the comm. "Let go, you're flying too high into the storm." She was right. Ruby made the mistake of glancing downward now that the creature had stopped trying to tear her off with limb or shake her off with tail. The ground below spiraled further and further away as the creature climbed into the heart of the tempest. Bolts of lightning arced not vertically but horizontally through the clouds, and she became increasingly aware of the rain now beginning to pelt her and the creature.

Moreover, she realized, it was fading. The thick, black trunk of the creature's tail – to which she had held as it ascended – was growing fainted. She was slipping – no, she was _phasing through it_ – as though in turning back to its smoky, translucent form it was literal fading out of existence.

Then, in an instant, she lost her grip. Clutching Crescent Rose tightly – she nearly lost the weapon – she began to fall. Eyes still gazing upward into the storm, she saw the rain eddying and spiraling on the wind, saw the bolts of lightning sparking, arcing, and flashing out of existence… all in slow motion. She felt herself falling, knew that she was descending at a rate of hundreds of feet per second, and that the impact – when it came – would likely shatter every bone in her body, if it didn't kill her outright. She was falling from too high up to negate the impact, even with both armor and aura.

She was falling… no… she was… flying? Her downward momentum ceased with a heave as she collided with something heavy, and her momentum immediately switched from the downward to the lateral. She turned her head, wheezing as the air was knocked from her lungs, and saw that she was resting in the talons of a great, ice-blue Nevermore. The bird wheeled in the storm, and far away through the pounding of her heart in her ears, Ruby could hear Weiss calling her name, and the creature roaring high above. Reality trickled back to her, like the last grains through an hourglass.

"Ruby?!" she heard Weiss calling. "Ruby respond dammit!"

"I—" She coughed. "I'm f-fine!" Unbidden, a chuckle escaped her lips. "Nice catch."

"You are the most insufferable—"

The creature roared again, and between the beats of the Nevermore's wings Ruby could see it beginning to reform. It would be a slow process, but it had no intentions of being idle. Below, the wind was picking up. The squad on the ground braced themselves against the ground to avoid being swept up; no longer content with simply ripping the doors and panels off of buildings, the force of the gale created by the Grimm was now tearing entire houses off their foundations, adding massive chunks of debris to the swirling storm. The Nevermore fought harder and harder for every beat of its wings, and as it began to fade Ruby knew that Weiss couldn't maintain the concentration needed to keep the summoning's form.

"Drop the summoning, Weiss, I'm good!" she called over the comm. The Nevermore vanished into a blue-white cloud almost instantly, and Ruby made a controlled landing on the ground. The wind was already beginning to die down, but Ruby felt no comfort once she figured out why: most of the houses adjacent to the plaza had been torn from the ground and were now spiraling skyward in a great cyclone of debris. The creature, barely a black speck, was five-hundred feet above them. It sat beating its wings contemptuously as the detritus formed into a great mass beneath it.

Ruby suddenly found Weiss at her side. "We don't have much time," the white-haired Huntress said breathlessly. "I'm… on reserves for my dust. That summoning took a lot out of me. I have enough for one more gravity glyph."

Ruby nodded, but Weiss wasn't finished.

"If I get you up there… can you get yourself back down?"

Ruby shot a crooked smile sideways at her best friend and, breathlessly, snorted a laugh. "Can I."

There was a pause. Weiss broke her glance from the creature just for a moment to look at Ruby. "Can you?!"

"Of course I can!"

No further discussion was brokered; the two had formulated independent plans of attack that, rather than contradicting each other, each complemented the other with the sort of efficiency and effectiveness that only came from partners as close as they. Ruby wrapped an arm around Weiss' waist and expended the last of her leg-cannon ammunition, coupled with a burst of aura, to launch both of them skyward. A hundred feet in the air, still far below the creature Weiss stopped herself and gave a twirl of her blade. Ruby felt the familiar elated feeling, as though she suddenly knew how to fly and had only just realized it. She took a deep breath and launched herself, jettisoning skyward.

The creature noticed. It roared its defiance and, pitching its one good arm forward, suddenly sent all of the debris it had torn from the ground rocketing towards Ruby and Weiss. It was not an unexpected reaction: Ruby had known she would have to go through the cloud of wreckage one way or another. She tucked in, narrowing to a ramrod-straight, aerodynamic profile. Crescent Rose folded and compacted to her side as she continued to race dead-on toward the creature. Feeling a familiar, comfortable surge of adrenaline and the warm tingle of her aura, she closed her eyes... and embraced the sheer _speed_ of it all.

Time slowed, though she knew it was her mind trying to rationalize the sudden acceleration of her body. A bicycle flew past her. Then a television. Soon, cobblestones, small trees, beds, bits of walls and windows, broken glass, a refrigerator, and more detritus besides was rocketing at her… _past_ her. Whether by sheer luck or something far greater, every projectile missed its mark. The kicker came with a house, still mostly intact after being torn from the ground, hurled toward her on a dead-set collision course. With the tiniest burst of aura and a slight adjustment of her body, Ruby rolled to the side and glided through the open front door, interior archway, and shattered back window of the house without touching. She felt as though she were on top of the world, like a circus dancer tumbling and swinging hundreds of feet above the crowd, daring fate to knock her from her pedestal.

As soon as she was clear of the debris, she unfurled Crescent Rose, its blade still glowing red. The creature didn't have time to react as she immediately turned fully, the soles of her feet the first thing to reach – and pass the creature. Any elation its twisted mind might have momentarily felt at being "missed" was cut short as the blade of Crescent Rose caught it flat across the broadest part of its torso. Ruby felt the barest tug of resistance which quickly gave way, and then she was descending. Down, down, down. She folded in tight, closed her eyes and put every ounce of aura she had left into cushioning the inevitable impact. Three… two… one…

She landed without a muted thud and a millisecond-brief snapping sound, like a stress-break in glass. Her legs turned to jelly, and she lost all feeling, skipping across the ground like a stone. She had, mercifully, overshot the village so severely that she was now back in the wide expanse of open meadow beyond the walls, so there was nothing for her to hit as she tumbled, rolled, and finally skidded to a halt over half a kilometer from where she had first impacted.

Her HUD flashed numerous warnings: aura depleted, armor integrity sub-50%, possible injuries to user, seek medical attention.

Despite it all, she was smiling.

Ruby wound her way back to the village as quickly as she could manage. She saw no sign of any Grimm on the way, and indeed the storm seemed to be dissipating. She hadn't seen the result of her daring gambit, her ascension, but she doubted she would be so jovial had she failed. Through weather-blasted streets she made her way, chunks of debris scattered all about, some of which she recognized as part of the great morass the creature had thrown at her. A few haggard faces peered at her from shelters: survivors. Her mind went to the people they had left in the house before departing for the square, the ones Roux had been leading, and the woman she had rescued with Moss and Weiss.

A drone from the distance drew her attention, and she repressed the urge to smile as she saw Sierra's dropship skimming over the forest and meadow to the village, circling the plaza before setting down. Ruby doubled her pace as the ship approached, realizing all at once that she had actually done it. They were clear. Target neutralized.

Her joy turned to ashes in her mouth as she rounded a familiar corner. On the same street – now scarcely recognizable – where she, Weiss, and Moss had saved the woman from the Helsenge was a mess of rubble. Broken furniture smashed to smithereens littered the street, some of it soaked by the rain had that pelted it as it amassed high up in the storm, other parts blasted black by lightning strikes. The twisted mess of metal that may have once been a bicycle was embedded over a foot deep into the wooden wall of a shop.

And atop, around, and _in_ the building where a group of villagers had huddled, desperate for deliverance, their eyes raking over the SRED team and begging for a salvation that they so dearly needed, were the wrecked remains of a house: the same house through which Ruby had flown as she made her last-ditch attack, feeling for all the world like she was invincible. And she may very well have been. But they weren't. In the cold light of the clearing sky, that was plain as day. Limbs twisted and bent at horrific angles, bodies smashed like matchsticks.

"Ruby?" The voice sounded far-off. Hollow. It rung in her ears, but she did not hear the words it spoke. "Ruby?" it said again, as though echoing from the bottom of a well.

She screamed.

* * *

 **A/N**

Welp.

Hi folks. First off, sorry (not really) for the cliffhanger. I can't resist a good cliffhanger, especially one with an emotional charge. This ain't Volume 1 anymore, kiddos. Shit's getting real. Second, I apologize (for real this time) about the _long_ wait for this chapter. I really appreciate the patience of those of you who are still making an effort to read this thing. Hopefully now that uni is done I can dedicate a bit more time to this fic.

I don't have much else to say, other than that I'm super excited to get back to writing. It's been too long. As always, huge props to both Dishwasher (for the inspiration) and NoGround (for the much-needed edits and revisions). No promises on when the next chapter will be out - but it won't be nearly as long this time.


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